Nabaztag (

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

for "hare", նապաստակ (''napastak'')) is a

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

enabled ambient electronic device in the shape of a rabbit, invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével, and manufactured by the company Violet. Nabaztag was designed to be a "smart object" comparable to those manufactured by Ambient Devices; it can connect to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

(to download weather forecasts, read its owner's email, etc.). It is also customizable and programmable to an extent. Sylvain Huet developed most of the embedded code of all Violet objects. Sebastien Bourdeauducq developed the

driver. Antoine Schmitt has been their behavior designer and

Jean-Jacques Birgé Jean-Jacques Birgé (born 5 November 1952) is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer (co-founder of Un Drame Musical Instantané with which he records about 30 albums, as well as for movies, theater, dance, radio), f ...

their sound designer (together they have also composed ''Nabaz'mob'', an opera for 100 Nabaztag). Maÿlis Puyfaucher (who features its French voice) wrote all the original texts pronounced by the rabbit. On 20 October 2009, following a long period of technical difficulties that ultimately led to Violet's bankruptcy, Mindscape purchased Violet. In October 2010, Mindscape announced a third generation Nabaztag, called "Karotz". Karotz was released April 2012. On 27 July 2011, Mindscape stopped the maintenance of the Nabaztag and released its source code. On 23 December 2011, it was announced that the Nabaztag rabbits would be "coming back to life" on 24 December 2011 at midnight via email to those with Violet accounts. The required server service at Nabaztag.com has since stopped functioning, but other options exist including setting up a server using OpenNab software or installing NabaztagLives on a

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

single-board computer.

Features

Out of the box, the Nabaztag rabbit is in height and weighs . It can send and receive MP3s and messages that are read out loud as well as perform the following services (by either speaking the information out loud or using indicative lights): weather forecast, stock market report, news headlines, alarm clock, e-mail alerts, RSS-Feeds, MP3-Streams and others. There is an

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

, with bindings for multiple

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s including

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

, or

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

, available to program the Nabaztag. At first speaking only in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and French, as of June 2007, Nabaztag fully supports services in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

and

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

. The rabbits can be customized with Skinz tattoos, detachable USB tails in various colors, and many interchangeable ears with different designs and colors. The Nabaztag:tag and Karotz versions are capable of reading RFID chips, and products containing RFID chips include the Flatanoz key ring tags, miniature models of the rabbits called Nano:ztag, and some children's books. Individual RFID chips were also produced and were called ztamp:s.

Community

Nabaztag owners can join

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

s to share photos and videos on websites like

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. Users can create podcasts (dubbed "Nabcasts" by Violet). There are currently over 100 of these available, mostly in English and French, created by different users on a variety of topics. Since Nabaztags can be programmed to provide new services using the API, there are user-created applications available, including a Dashboard widget and a lottery alarm.

Infrastructure shortcomings

In December 2006 (most notably around Christmas) a number of sold rabbits caused issues for Violet, the maker of Nabaztag. The Nabaztag device acts as a client to the France-based servers. When users attempted to register their new devices, the centralized servers were unable to handle the demand, resulting in service disruptions, server unavailability, and data integrity problems caused by users creating multiple half-finished registrations. This resulted in a major customer service problem for Violet. The fundamental philosophy of Nabaztag, that all objects should be connected together on the Internet by a server maintained by Violet did not work as expected (e.g. the server sometimes could not cope with volume of traffic, services had to be switched off and there were unreliable response times often as slow as hours rather than seconds). In March 2008, Violet changed their server infrastructure and bunny software to use the standard

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), i ...

protocol. Bunnies were thereafter reacting much more rapidly on average, although long delays still occurred sometimes. The change caused service disruptions and problems for a couple of weeks.

Technical specifications

The device embeds a PIC18F6525 microcontroller, a

BenQ BenQ Corporation (; ) is a Taiwanese multinational company that sells and markets technology products, consumer electronics, computing and communications devices under the "BenQ" brand name, which stands for the company slogan ''Bringing Enj ...

PC card 802.11b Wi-Fi adapter, an ml2870a Audio-PCM

sound generator A sound generator is a vibrating object which produces a sound. There are two main kinds of sound generators (thus, two main kinds of musical instruments). A full cycle of a sound wave will be described in each example which consists of initia ...

, an

ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...

converter, two motors to activate the ears, a TLC5922 LED controller, and a small amount of

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

. The embedded software handles the

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

stack and Wi-Fi driver. It also implements a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

which is able to execute up to 64 kb of code. A dedicated assembly language exists to program the different features of the device.

Nabaztag/tag

Out on market on 12 December 2006, Nabaztag/tag is an improved model of Violet's Nabaztag. The new model supports

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

audio streaming for Internet radio (with preset radio stations and an app allowing to add your own stream that does not work) and podcasts. This second version Nabaztag has also added a microphone that allows for voice activation of some of its services. However, despite text on the website claiming that new services will be available soon, the number of working voice activated services remains less than a handful. A final added feature is a built-in RFID reader to detect special-purpose RFID tags (i.e.

ISO/IEC 14443 ISO/IEC 14443 ''Identification cards -- Contactless integrated circuit cards -- Proximity cards'' is an international standard that defines proximity cards used for identification, and the transmission protocols for communicating with it. Standa ...

Type B). Nabaztag advertisement is presenting the ability to identify objects (depicted are e.g. keys). Nabaztag/tag can, as of November 2007, use RFID tags to read special edition versions of children's books by the French publishe
Gallimard Jeunesse
In October 2008, Violet launched RFID Children's Books with Penguin Publishing House. Further RFID services and support have been promised. Violet has now started selling the Zstamps and Nano:ztags (little mini Rabbits with Zstamps inside them) and another called mir:ror which is its own RFID system separate from the Nabaztag. The Wi-Fi was also upgraded to support

WPA WPA may refer to: Computing *Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard *Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing * Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada * Windows Performance An ...

encryption, and now uses a cheaper SoftMAC card instead of the BenQ device which embedded its own 802.11 protocol stack.

Cessation of service

Mindscape, filing for bankruptcy, discontinued the Nabaztag/tag web service in late July 2011.

Karotz

Karotz is the third generation Nabaztag, and first to be released since the Mindscape purchase. Like its predecessors, Karotz connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi and has RFID reading capability. Additionally, it includes an integrated web cam, a USB port (which can be used for power as well as connectivity), and 256 MB of onboard storage. Karotz was released in April 2011 and is heavily integrated with Facebook and Twitter. In October 2011 Mindscape was taken over by Aldebaran Robotics quoting "Together we shall go on with this wonderful adventure". In October 2014 Aldebaran Robotic
announce
The end of Karotz's adventures" with "nearly 10 years after its first appearance, Karotz is facing a very strong technological competition: the connected devices are now 4G, mobile and evolutionary. Karotz and its users have not only helped establish connected devices; they have paved the way. New products make a stronger match to market needs, marking the end of Karotz's great story." "Karotz's servers and customer service will be stopped on February 18th, 2015"

Karotz Private Servers

In 2016, two years after "The end of Karotz's adventures" a new English enabled API has been set up to bring Karotz out of retirement from a volunteer initiative calle
Free Rabbits!

Security

During DEF CON 21, Daniel Crowley, Jenniver Savage and David Bryan pointed out several security vulnerabilities about the Karotz. Unsecured connections to the website's provider could allow a

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

to steal the users'

passwords, take control of the Karotz, installing malware and even to corrupt the device without any knowledge of the end user. During the same talk, they also show how it was possible to spy around the Karotz due to the presence of the camera and the microphone embedded in the bunny.

Awards

Violet was awarded honourable mentions, category ''Small companies'' of the DME Award 2007 for Nabaztag. Nabaztag/tag was awarded for Netxplorateur of the Year in 2008. Nabaz'mob was awarded by

Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) ...

Digital Musics 2009 (Award of Distinction).

References

External links

*
Music&Radio on your Nabaztag
usics/Radios on Nabaztag
The Nabzone
idgets and customisations for the Nabaztag
Nabaz'mob
ite about the "opera for 100 smart rabbits" event
karotz.com
{spaced ndashOfficial site of Nabaztag successor Virtual pets Entertainment robots Personal assistant robots Robotic animals 2000s robots Robots of France Rabbits and hares in popular culture